✓ Chaos Theory | Diego Hargreeves [1]

【CHAPTER SEVENTEEN】

—chapter seventeen.

  ❛ no one ever gives a shit about me. ❜  

ELODIE WOKE UP TO THE SMELL OF EGGS.

Burning eggs, to be exact. Which just so happened to be the whole reason of her waking up.

She pushed herself up and looked around, realising that she had somehow gotten to her bed. From what little she remembered - and from what little she was allowing herself to remember - she had fallen asleep on the other side of the room, with Diego. She had expected him to leave, sure, but not for her to be carefully tucked into bed, even changed from the blazer and skirt she had worn before. Vaguely, she remembered the struggle of getting her out of the mess, but it was still a surprise to see PJ pants and not the mess of the day before.

And she certainly had not expected to smell cooking (if she could call it that?) in the other room, at the very least.

Elodie groaned and flipped the covers off her, shivering even while sliding out of the bed. Still groggy, she managed to find a pair of socks thrown under the bed and then a scrunchie resting on her bed table. Her curls ran rampant and stuck up in every which direction, but the woman hardly acknowledged this. It all got shoved back into a low do and left so she could stumble to her bedroom door and discover the source of the odd smell.

She twisted around the corner and stopped, frowning at the sight before her. Diego had not seen her yet with his back turned, but she could see the mess of her counter made and smell the absolutely insane scent of the burnt pan, or eggs, or...was everything burning? He was cursing under his breath rather violently, so definitely a lot was going on -- and a lot of nothing good. She wished she could find the sight merely endearing, and to be fair, he was adorable, but...

"Yo."

He jumped at the sound of her voice and whirled around, pan in one hand and spatula in the other. In the back of Elodie's head, she stored the image of him right then; hair a mess and dressed the most casual she had ever seen her in his place. He wore boxers and a loose t-shirt, black because the man never broke tradition, and splatters of something coated the front of his shirt -- she wasn't sure she wanted to know just what.

His brows furrowed. "You're supposed to be sleeping."

"Whoops, don't think I got the memo."

He tried to smile, but it came off as more a grimace than anything. Half-heartedly, Diego slid the pan and spatula behind him and moved forward. His hand hovered for a second, half between his side and her arm, but it dropped down again.